The Education Department on Thursday detailed a new model for turning around some of New York City’s lowest-performing schools, saying that the schools would serve as the first testing ground for new teacher evaluation laws passed by the Legislature in May.
The model, known as transformation, will be put in place beginning in September in 11 of the 34 city schools that the state has identified as “persistently lowest achieving,” a designation covering the lowest-achieving 5 percent of schools in the state. The remaining 23 schools on the list will almost certainly be closed and replaced by smaller schools or charter schools, although that process is not to begin until the start of the 2011-12 school year, officials said.
In an agreement reached Thursday between the city and the United Federation of Teachers, the schools will be permitted to hire two new kinds of teachers: master teachers and turnaround teachers. Those teachers will be paid as much as 30 percent more than